Bruce Nauman Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything.
-
I think of other artists as generous when I get inspired by their work. That's why I like curating. You don't want to take someone else's art and have your way with it. You've got to be respectful of them.
-
I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn't work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.
-
Cats are impossible to work with. They're just very difficult because you can't really train them. They're not really interested in whatever you want them to do. Dogs want to please you; cats only want to please themselves.
-
I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.'
-
I know from my own experience that great films and great actors can have a really big influence on you. There is a place for art in the world, and if you're lucky enough to be good at something and to keep being given work, it's not such a bad thing.
-
Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.
-
I wrote 'Criminal' in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.
-
People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.
-
But all over Ohio - all over America - men and women are going back to work with the pride of building something stamped 'Made in America.'
-
How do you deal with a criminal that will not listen to what you have to say and who continues his policy of violence? Some say you continue to talk and let him tire himself out. But nearly 40 years after the institution of apartheid, is there anyone who still believes that verbal persuasion will work?
-
The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.
-
No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
-
Glory is attained from hard work, step by step.
-
You come in to work, put that game face on, leave your problems at home, stay strong.
-
I cannot imagine a more enjoyable place to work than in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology where I work.
-
We tried every single way of giving birth. It didn't work. I wasn't too crazy about having to do a C-section and take all the drugs. Finally, I just had to be like, 'Let it go.'
-
I have reaffirmed my political will to work towards national unity.
-
Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?
-
The Bible is my sport psychology manual.
-
Work and play go hand in hand. A lot of people want to work, work, and work until 40, and then relax. Who says you'll get to 40? Or 50? Who knows what'll happen in the next five minutes? The only reality is the present. And if you can't learn to live in the moment, you'll never be content.
-
We never saw our face in more timeless mirrors. But so, too, do we speak a language whose significance is incomprehensible to us ourselves — a language of which every syllable is both transitory and immortal. Symbols are signs, which nevertheless give us consciousness of our values. They are first of all projections of forms from a hidden dimension, then, too, searchlights through which we hurl our signals into the unknown in a language pleasing to the gods. And these mysterious conversations, this chain of miraculous efforts from which the core of our history exists, which is a history of the battles of men and gods – they are the only things which make learning worthwhile for humanity.
-
I worked at an ice cream parlor called Chadwicks. We wore old-timey outfits and had to bang a drum, play a kazoo, and sing 'Happy Birthday' to people while giving them free birthday sundaes. Lots of ice cream scooping and $1 tips.
-
And then what makes the work interesting is if you choose the right questions.
